Martin Luther King Radical Quotes & Sayings

History may be a nightmare - an endless cycle of violence and oppression. Old victims of domination soon became new perpetrators of domination. We have seen this cycle over and over again: American revolutionaries dominating Indigenous peoples and defending slavery, anti-colonial heroes becoming dictators, anti-racists supporting patriarchy and homophobia, liberals crusading for imperial invasion and occupation. Such a nightmare radically calls into question the power of radical love in human history. For King, if we accept such a nightmare, then only self-destruction awaits us. To dream is to hold death at arm's length. To love is to really be alive in history. Without radical love, nihilism triumphs - "power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."1 — Martin Luther King Jr.

The world looks to the priest, because it looks to Jesus! No one can see Christ; but everyone sees the priest, and through him they wish to catch a glimpse of the Lord! Immense is the grandeur of the Lord! Immense is the grandeur and dignity of the priest! — Pope John Paul II

The most difficult idea to reconcile in war is the notion that anything is going to be solved by killing a stranger, or in risking your life for a cause anchored in some distant political arena. — Walter Dean Myers

I was always, luckily, only a reader. — Josef Skvorecky

Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes
and calls it his pride. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm a painfully slow reader. And to this day, I mean, I love reading, and I'm very careful - very selective about what I read because I don't read very fast and, therefore, not a great deal. — Philip Schultz

When you love a child, you change the world! — Angelique La Fon-Cox

Until everyone is free, the experiment of America is not succeeding. We all
want opportunity. — Bryan Batt

[Martin Luther King, Jr.] concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the 'loving your enemies' sermon this way: 'So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you,'I love you. I would rather die than hate you.'
Go ahead and reread that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. — Sarah Vowell

And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. — Haruki Murakami

The right tools for solving disputes within our community are precision instruments such as reason, communication, empathy, curiosity, and understanding. They are also the right tools for building a global civilization of peace and prosperity. — Paul K. Chappell

You can go to these chat-lines. It's not hard it's really easy. Another thing the show makes clear is not talking about these issues is what leads kids to go on the Internet and find out the information themselves. And then they come across people like Mr. Healy wanting to meet them in the park. That's what leads to these kind of more-dangerous things. — Sarah Steele

When you are right, you cannot be too radical; When you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Why, it seemed to me I had lost the most of myself; and there was left only a brain which played with ideas, and a body that went delicately down pleasant ways. And I could not believe as my fellows believed, nor could I love them, nor could I detect anything in aught they said or did save their exceeding folly: for I had lost their cordial common faith of what use they made of half-hours and months and years ... I had lost faith in the importance of my own actions, too. There was a little time of which the passing might be made endurable; beyond gaped unpredictable darkness: and that was all there was of certainty anywhere. — James Branch Cabell

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. — Martin Luther King Jr.

As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur. — Woodrow Wilson

Martin Luther King was only an activist for 13 years and every year he changed and every year he became more radical. By the end he was calling for revolution. People don't know this because they go to too many prayer breakfasts on his birthday. — Bill Ayers

I was more than anything a radical. I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted, including perhaps the use of violence. But I really just wanted to be left alone. I thought some laws, like minimum-wage laws, helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation. I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence. — Walter E. Williams

Brazil will change when its cities change. — Jaime Lerner

A lot of times, drama around it is not for the worse but for the best in the long run. If we look at it that way, I have learned to find the best of it in most situations. — Camila Alves

We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power ... a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society. — Martin Luther King Jr.

My favorite older movie of all-time is "Scarface." Al Pacino played that role so well. It's a longer movie, but I like it. — Virgil Green